It’s back… after a lengthy break, we’re resurrecting our ‘Video Of The Week’ feature for 2017 – and our first choice is one that sees a dark master of the black metal art take a totally different road to ruin while at the same not sacrificing his noir soul… to find out who it is and what he’s up to, click the link:

It used to be that the “great British summer” was “festival season”. But, while the over-commercialized wallet-busting big name events tend to be confined to the summer months, there are literally hundreds of smaller, independently organised festivals up and down the land virtually all the year round, with something to suit all tastes. With that in mind, Über Rock presents our tips for the 17 festivals, covering all genres and sub-genres, taking place all over the Über Kingdom of Rock n Roll over the coming year, that should be on your radar. So, credit cards at the ready:

Live gigs are the lifeblood of rock ‘n’ roll, and over the past 12 months Uber Rock’s dedicated writers have been to literally hundreds of them and seen possibly thousands of bands. Unlike many other websites, who won’t darken the door of a venue unless they have been given a freebie, more often than not, they have paid into the shows (although offers of guest tickets are more than gratefully received), and their attendance is purely voluntary and because they love the music… So, as 2017 dawns, our team looks back at the year now fading into the rearview mirror and gives you their pick of the crop of the massive amount of shows they have attended in that period. At the end of each list, they also present their thoughts on their personal surprises and disappointments of 2016, and their predictions for the coming year…

It’s the last day of the year, and what better time to look back on what the rock n roll world has offered us over the past 12 months, by publishing Uber Rock’s definitive rundown of simply the best albums to come our way. Believe us, it was a difficult choice – made all the harder by the fact that, this year, we asked our writers to pick only their top ten faves… Eleven writers submitted a total of 92 different albums, to which a rigorous and carefully monitored counting process was applied to give us our overall Top Ten. Click the link to find out the results:

Just as he had declared the Singles Club closed for 2016, Dom Daley woke up to find another avalanche of slices of 7” vinyl piling up against his door… so he had no choice but to re-open for this one-off Christmas Eve special. Click to link for more glunky gloriousness – and to discover which potential new member found themselves barred before they’d barely set foot over the threshold:

With the so-called "festive season" fast upon us, this might well be Dom Daley’s last Singles Club of the year and whilst it might not seem that my sack is bulging like previous months, this one might just be the pick of the bunch quality wise. With a slender lean mean six from raging garage/punk to cool as fuck power pop this singles club has got the biggest baubles and you can wrap tinsel on that and take it to the rock and roll bank!

OK, it's slap on the wrists time... we forgot about the 'Video Of The Week' feature last weekend... yep, it went clean out of our heads, what with the aftermath of the clocks going back, Halloween celebrations - and just being too plain fucking lazy to get out of bed and pick one... but we've more than made up for it this week, with a video apt for the darkening of the nights and the drawing in of the days... Click to link to find out what gloominess Mark Ashby's doom-laden soul finds itself in this week:

There is no better experience than coming across new music, no matter how you do so, whether it be via the pages of a magazine or - in the case of Jason Daniel Baker - on a street corner near a baseball ground in central Toronto! It was one of those moments which caused our man in Canada to enter the previously unexplored, at least on these pages, world of "samurai punk", and introduce the rest of the Uberverse to Tokyo's latest export, a trio by the name of MunizO:

So, where did Uber Rock editor-in-chief Mark Ashby's quest for the latest 'Video Of The Week'? Well, not far... just up the road from our Belfast HQ, in fact, to the green hills of east Antrim, where he found the fates being conjured and a monster being awoken... click the link to find out more about this week's decidedly metal clip...

Hallowe'en is just around the corner and "killer clowns" are stalking the streets of the UK... so, given such a conjoining of event, there was only one video Uber Rock's boss Mark Ashby could pick for 'Video Of The Week': ladeez and gentlegermz, click the link to join the freakshow...

Our 'Video Of The Week' is proving a popular addition to the site. So, what piece of miniature musical cinematography has captured the imagination of UR head honcho Mark Ashby this week? Has he once more stayed close to home? Or has he ventured far and wide? Or has he thrown a curveball? Well, there's only one way to find out, and that's to click the clicky linky thingy...

Last summer, Heart made a very long overdue return to the UK’s shores. It was a slightly unusual tour, not least in the choice of venues: the band chose to play auditoria more renowned for the presentation of classical music than rock n roll – Birmingham’s Symphony Hall, for example, or Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall. The undoubted highlight of the tour most definitely was the band’s stop off at the iconic Royal Albert Hall, where they added to the sense of occasion by teaming up with the venue’s “house band”, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, to help add a slightly different interpretation of some of their massive repertoire. Uber Rock's Mark Ashby cracks open the champers and caviare to relish the aural and visual delight of the subsequent DVD of this historic night:

After a bit of time away, Jo Hayes returns to kick off the new year here on Über Rock with her no nonsense, honest approach to blogging, addressing health issues, the state of her native America in the post-truth era and the longevity of The Rolling Stones…

While many other webzines have chosen to ignore it, for reasons best known to themselves, the EP is a format which has long been championed by Über Rock, so much so that it has its very own end of year chart. So, here our writers champion the bite size morsels of musical magic that have caught their ears, and stayed there, over the past 12 months…

Back in October of 2013, Bowling For Soup’s Jaret Reddick and Erik Chandler played a very special acoustic show in the beautiful Union Chapel in Islington. The show has now been given the full DVD release treatment, and our man Dave Prince reckons it serves as the ideal early Christmas present, not just for BFS fans but any self-respecting music fan… click the link to find out why:

Life is all about connections, and so it is here on Uber Rock this fine Sunday, with the Video Of The Weak (sic) tied directly into this month's Midnite Mixtape Massacre... click on the link to find out what is UR boss Mark Ashby's uncensored choice (have we given you enough clues yet?)...

In 2010, German metal titans Scorpions announced their intention to retire from the music business, following the world tour to promote their just released ‘Sting In The Tail’ album. Of course, as we all know, that was a somewhat premature pronouncement… But, that supposedly historic final tour - and the last gig on it - are now the subject of a newly-released documentary, detailing the band's storied 50-year career and how they broke down geographic boundaries. Munching the popcorn is Uber Rock's Mark Ashby...

So, who invented prog? Robert Fripp and King Crimson? Keith Emerson and The Nice? The Moody Blues? The Beatles? Yes? Genesis? The answer may well be a Scottish keyboard wizard by the name of Billy Ritchie... but, how did he do it? Uber Rock's Jim Rowland puts on his reading glasses and delves deep into his story in this autobiography by a man who finally may well be being credited as a pioneer and originator of a style that laid the foundations for what was to become progressive rock...

A little more than a month ago, we introduced our ‘Video Of The Week’ feature… little did we know it would fly off the muthafuckin’ radar. Our Tigertailz exclusive generated more than 6,500 hits in its first few hours! So, who are we going to send into the stratosphere this weekend? Click the link to find out:

It's been closed for a while, but now it's open for business again... While Uber Rock has moved not only cities but countries, Dom Daley has been undertaking the relatively simply task of moving house. But, he's now got his turntable out of its protective box, the speakers plugged in and sent the wife downstairs to enjoy a gin and tonic while he re-opens the man den that is the Singles Club. Click the link to find out what treats he has in store now that normal service has been restored...

There is no doubting the significance the name Malcolm McLaren has in the development of modern music as we know it today. Now, a new documentary seeks to get under the skin and look behind the story of the man - and, in many cases, the myth. Does it succeed? We sent our man Jason Palmer down to his local picture house, subbed him the price of a bucket of popcorn and an unhealthy fizzy drink and tasked him with answering that very question. Click the link to find out what he thought of this latest dose of cinematic 'Anarchy!'...